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 <B>20 February 1998</B>


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<I>Dedicated to the Memory of Robert Hieb</I> 




<H1><A NAME="SEC1" HREF="r5rs_toc.html#TOC1">Summary</A></H1>

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The report gives a defining description of the programming language
Scheme.  Scheme is a statically scoped and properly tail-recursive
dialect of the Lisp programming language invented by Guy Lewis
Steele Jr. and Gerald Jay Sussman.  It was designed to have an
exceptionally clear and simple semantics and few different ways to
form expressions.  A wide variety of programming paradigms, including
imperative, functional, and message passing styles, find convenient
expression in Scheme.


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The introduction offers a brief history of the language and of
the report.


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The first three chapters present the fundamental ideas of the
language and describe the notational conventions used for describing the
language and for writing programs in the language.


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Chapters section <A HREF="r5rs_6.html#SEC24">4. Expressions</A> and section <A HREF="r5rs_7.html#SEC42">5. Program structure</A> describe
the syntax and semantics of expressions, programs, and definitions.


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Chapter section <A HREF="r5rs_8.html#SEC48">6. Standard procedures</A> describes Scheme's built-in
procedures, which include all of the language's data manipulation and
input/output primitives.


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Chapter section <A HREF="r5rs_9.html#SEC71">7. Formal syntax and semantics</A> provides a formal syntax for Scheme
written in extended BNF, along with a formal denotational semantics.
An example of the use of the language follows the formal syntax and
semantics.


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The report concludes with a list of references and an
alphabetic index.


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